Wednesday, June 13, 2012

Four months ago, the ITC dismissed a complaint HTC had brought against Apple in May 2010. The original complaint related to five patents. HTC withdrew one, and the ITC did not hold Apple to infringe any of the asserted claims from the four remaining ones. HTC almost immediately appealed the ITC ruling to the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC), but it apparently concluded that this wasn't worth pursuing. Here's an excerpt from the CAFC's daily disposition sheet (click on the image to enlarge):

The docket shows that HTC had brought its motion to dismiss on May 31 (click on the image to enlarge):

I think HTC did the right thing. I never believed that its first complaint against Apple had merit. HTC could certainly have afforded to continue with the appeal, but it would only have annoyed the CAFC and the ITC. And both the CAFC and the ITC are going to soon adjudicate matters that are much more important to HTC:

HTC has an appeal pending against the import ban Apple won in December 2011 over the "data tapping" patent and must fend off Apple's appeal, which could widen the scope of that ban through an appeal of the parts of the ITC ruling that weren't in Apple's favor.

There's also some litigation involving Apple, HTC and S3G in Germany, and a defensive case that HTC brought in the UK, just to complete the story.

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About Me

Florian Mueller is an app developer who used to be an award-winning intellectual property activist. His 30 years of software industry expertise span different market segments (games, education, productivity and infrastructure software), diverse business models, and technical and commercial areas of responsibility. In recent years, Florian advised a diversity of clients on the patent wars surrounding mobile devices, and on their economic and technical implications. (In order to avoid conflicts of interest, Florian does not hold or initiate transactions in any technology stocks or derivatives thereof, except that he is long AAPL.) He is now developing games for smartphones and tablet computers.